


Sea Ballads

by BakanoHealthy



Category: Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger
Genre: Fluff, Gen, I think it qualifies, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slice of Life, Team Bonding, Team as Family, just them having afternoon tea can be written into something, shit it does, these people just have very write-able dynamics, who have i become
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 18:54:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14551194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BakanoHealthy/pseuds/BakanoHealthy
Summary: A place of calm for all of my domestic-life-on-a-pirate-spaceship fantasies.





	Sea Ballads

**Author's Note:**

> So. I got into Gokaiger of all things. Not that I complain (though yes, actually, right now I have one (1) friend that I'm dragging into watching it with me to talk about it with. My Twitter is a real time feed of my whims. I'm so lonely)
> 
> I said 'fuck it, I have been into weirder stuff than this and made fan content for them with no qualm, what is this to stop me in my track" and tried writing something inconsequential for the kids today. In the end it got to page five before I got all of it out, and I've had more fun writing than I did for at least three months now. So I guess I now surrender to the Gokaiger muse and sit back to see where things go. 
> 
> I don't think there will be anything on the heavy angst side in this pile, but there will probably be a lot of Gai and maybe moderate nostalgia and vague homesickness. Those always pair well with in-ship squabbling. 
> 
> Enjoy.

“Time to sleep,” Doc mumbled.

Gai didn’t even answer him. Which didn’t necessary, or didn’t in any way really, mean the kid was sleepy - Gai seemed to have a separate energy bank for talking. One could sit him up while he was asleep, ask a question about his favourite subject (Super Sentai teams. It’s Super Sentai teams.), and get a full thorough answer. The only time he didn’t make any noise was when he was busy wiring his thoughts toward writing, which was just like speaking but on paper for him. So it was a logic easy to grasp.

Putting down the torch, Doc turned to Gai and tapped his shoulder. “Hey. Hey Gai.” A look through the words nearest to where the pen stopped on paper at that moment confused Doc’s translator terribly, which wasn’t common for Gai’s handwriting to do. _That can be a pickle, huh_ , a part of Doc’s brain chimed in uninvited, _the lost star squadron knows the handwriting of some people in this crew can be horrible to decipher. Not naming any names here, but Marvelous and Luka know who they are—_

He shushed the rambling just in time to hear Gai’s question. “Don? There a problem?”

“No. It’s, no. It’s.” Doc fumbled with words just a bit. “It’s late, that’s what I— yeah. It’s a full day cycle since you last slept,” he concluded lamely.

Gai smiled. It’s a blessing, really, that the one person who kept staying around when Doc was doing his work never paid any mind to how badly he... worded, uh, things… with most of his brain juice spent on something other than talking. “I stole a nap while waiting for Luka to nick that ring, don’t worry about me.” The kid was getting more at ease with the more un-hero-like of activities on this ship as of late, which Doc didn’t know yet was a bad thing or a good thing. “What about you, Don?”

“I don’t need much of that.” Doc waved his hand. “Uh. You know.”

“Sleep?”

“Yes.”

Doc could see with the corner of his eye Gai was furiously turning the pages of his notebook, to one with his name and a small drawing of a… small chicken? chicken larvae? chicklet? in the upper right corner. “What’s that for,” he asked, at the same time as Gai’s practically glimmering “Do you mind tell me more about that?”

They stared at each other for a moment, and then Doc said, “I can. Uh. Wait my turn?”

Gai scratched his head with the end of his pen. “Sorry about that,” he smiled that apologetic smile of his, “I know you don’t need a full interview interrupting your work. I’m gonna,” he brought the pen back down onto the page, “note the question down. We can revisit it whenever…”

Doc looked back at the project he had on the table then, did a quick but probably only moderately correct calculation in his mind, and then reached for the laptop and shut down the running simulation. “It’s no problem at all, really, Gai. I… to be honest, I kinda miss talking about where I’m from. It used to be how you make conversations at uni. Tried and true method, in my experience, with how diverse everyone’s background is…”

“A space university?” One could practically hear Gai’s eyes sparkle. Doc smiled.

“By Earthlings’ definition… yes? We used to have a pretty prestigious academy in my hometown, but it didn’t have a course for computer science, and the people there were… kinda snobbish.” Doc wrinkled his nose at the memories. “Not that I could ever afford it there, anyway. I went to an intergalactic uni for a computer science diploma, and then I got a full scholarship, so I started another course in xenobioengineering, and I just kept piling it up…”

On his page in Gai’s notebook there now was something that looked vaguely like _xenobioengurgling_ scribbled down. “That sounded awesome!” Gai said. “I never knew how to actually study, to be honest, so I did kinda horrible at school. I always envied people like you a ton.”

“That,” Doc chuckled. One of his hand had, without him noticing, found its way onto his head, and it was now on a semi-jittery but determined mission to rid at least a small square of his head of hair. He willed it back down onto the table. He was probably blushing. “It was in large thanks to the environment, really. That uni wasn’t too well known or anything, but with how many of us attended and how many places we were from, they were much more obliged to build their courses for more than just rich snobby kids. There always seemed to be so many new things to look into there…”

“Sounds like heaven,” Gai was beaming. The idea of meeting new people always appealed to him.

“Agreed. I really wanted to stay and work there, maybe even teach. But…”

The rest of the sentence fell into silence, bringing the amiable mood down with it. Gai catched on with the implied quickly enough - he had been getting better and better at reading the crew’s special brand of curt, brash, and frankly not even halfway coherent enough language recently. With the others it meant he could converse with them on an almost standard level of efficiency now, but with Doc, who had arguably the closest inner logic to his, they could perform linguistically on a good-friend level.

“I’m sorry about that,” Gai spoke up in the end. “If the topic makes you sad then it’s best to talk about it when you’re prepared for the conversation. That’s what my mom taught me.” His smile had returned then, not quite as brilliant as the one he had before the talk lulled, but gentle. “You were asking me something before, Don?”

“Oh, I.” Doc blinked, trying to backtrack. “Oh. Right. I saw the chick you drew there,” he pointed at the doodle on his page (while his brain marveled at the word. _Chick. It’s just_ chick _. What the nine rings is this damned language_ ), “and I’m kinda… curious about that.” He was blushing again, wasn’t he. Star Squadron. “I, um. I don’t see the connection between that and the subject of this page, which is, uh, me.”

Gai seemed to have shrunk a bit into himself while Doc elaborated on his question. “That. Haha. I have a drawing for everyone in the crew.” He sounded like he was getting all of this out before his face could catch on and implode. “Have you ever seen a chick in real life, Don? You can probably see the resemblance in a photo with colors.”

Curious, Doc pulled up a search engine on his laptop. An image popped up (from a database in an old pirate ship. Curious) among other images of something that looked much more like an eyeball with hair than any Earth animal. He blinked at it, a bit owlishly. It was definitely cuter than he thought. “It’s blond.”

Gai scratched his head with his pen again. “Blond, and fluffy. And very soft. One of my aunts had a farm, and I spent a summer there with her when I was five. She let me play with the chickens and taught me how to be gentle with the animals. I really wanted to keep a chick, but my mom told me we moved around too much to make a good home for a chicken.” He smiled the apologetic smile again. “I really like chickens. They’re really nice to be around!”

“That’s very flattering, Gai.” Doc said, and his hands were really restless now. He looked back at the photo of the chick, and then at Gai again. “Thank you.”

He must have been smiling, because Gai seemed very relieved. He stopped shrinking in and started turning the pages in his notebook. “I got picked on for doodling in my notes in class,” he said, “and that was when I was in high school. You’re supposed to outgrow those things by then. I didn’t stay in that school for long or anything, just one year, but people notice these things, usually. It just helps me get things in order to have an image I can associate things with in mind, is all. You should see my earliest notes of the Super Sentai encyclopedia.” Doc let him ramble on, expel all the embarrassment. “It’s probably weird for me to keep notes on everyone as well, but all Super Sentai teams have their story documented, y’know? I know I would die to have a good, detailed account of my heroes’ adventure. So now that I’m a member of a Super Sentai myself I’m fulfilling this one very specific dream. There might even be a kid out there who wants to know about us just as much as I want to know about other teams, and they’ll get their mind blown with this.”

It was really just like Gai to think in that vein, and that made Doc smiled fondly. “You say you have a specific image for everyone?” He prompted.

“Yeah!” Gai stopped his hand on Ahim’s page. In a corner was a flower - rose. “Ahim is a rose, because the petals feel like how it feels to be around her. And roses have thorns, so any aggressors will learn their lesson with them soon enough. Luka,” he turned back a page, “Luka is a diamond. This one is pretty obvious, I think,” he laughed.

Doc looked on as Gai took his time to get to Joe’s page. “A sword,” he remarked out loud. Now that he knew Gai’s logic behind the chosen images, he got the connection right away. “And Marvelous?”

“What and Marvelous?”

They both jumped at the sudden question from the doorway. Doc turned back to see their captain, still with nothing but his sleeping pajama bottoms on, poking his head into the main deck. “Marvelous!” Gai squeaked.

“Sounds like a party,” Marvelous replied. He walked to where they were sitting leisurely. “You lot having fun instead of sleeping like sensible people huh. Explain.”

Doc gestured at the controlled chaos on his part of the table. “It’s a new weather monitor. We’re going into pretty unknown territory.”

“I’m just making notes,” Gai said. And smiled.

“On Doc’s work,” Marvelous had his elbow on the back of the kid’s chair.

“On, yes,” Gai’s pen-holding hand had started flapping now. “On his work, on him, it’s a thing I do. I take note on everyone. I took note on you just last week.” His face scrunched up right after the sentence was fully out of his mouth.

Marvelous swiped the notebook up from the table. “Lemme see,” he said, and Gai bounced off the chair, aiming for his hands. Doc hastily pushed any parts of his project that sat too close to the table edge back into the center, then circled his arms around the mess for good measure.

“Marvelous!” Gai was squeaking again. He had one hand on a corner of his notebook, but he didn’t yank it back too harshly, probably in fear of tearing it apart. Marvelous was leading them in a weird dance toward the control panel.

“‘Heart of gold under an uncaring exterior’, oh. You slander me in your personal notes. ‘Free-spirited’, nice. Proficiency… I don’t see ‘captaining’ in this section. You’re implying things, Gai. Favourite food - this part isn’t nearly big enough. This—” His gleeful remarks dropped for a moment, making Gai freeze in place. Doc decided he should approach now. “Gai, what’s this.”

Peering over Marvelous’ shoulder, Doc could see the drawing in the corner. It was of a… well, it wasn’t of anything he could recognize. Maybe a sea urchin. He had only seen those once, like ten years ago. They brought not-good, very-embarrassing memories.

He looked at Gai expectantly along with Marvelous. The kid was blushing mightily.

“Gai has a specific image he associates with each of us,” Doc alleviated the burden of explaining everything from the beginning from him. “I’m a chick. A, you know, small chicken,” he elaborated when Marvelous arched an eyebrow at him. “Joe’s a sword. Luka’s a diamond. Ahim’s a rose. And uh, you’re…”

He looked at the doodle again, and then back at Gai, and they stood like that for a moment. Then Gai said, “It’s a rambutan.”

That definitely confused both Doc and Marvelous. They kept staring at Gai in wait of an explanation.

“It’s a fruit. I think,” Gai stopped his sentence at an unfortunate place. “I think it looked like Marvelous.”

Doc decided he could try and look it up instead of squeezing the poor kid a bit tighter like Marvelous was doing, and so he returned to his laptop. “I don’t know if I will be able to find a good photo, since we haven’t come across this specific thing during our stay on Earth, and that means our chance of finding any information of it out here is pretty slim.” Something still popped up, from SPD’s database of all place. “Oh. _Oh_.”

Marvelous walked over to him, Gai and his notebook firmly under grip. They both looked at the screen.

Doc could feel the air around Marvelous vibrate.

From under his arm, Gai squeaked, “You got the right image afterall, Don.”

**Author's Note:**

> Now with [a build-up comic on tumblr](http://bakanohealthy.tumblr.com/post/173685645387/i-wrote-whatever-the-fuck-this-is-two-days-ago-and).


End file.
